Best DFS NASCAR picks for Watkins Glen
— -- What an odd weekend for NASCAR. It was fun, but maybe not for your fantasy team.
The top two points earners Monday at Pocono, Chris Buescher and Regan Smith, cost just $5,400 and $5,500, respectively. Weather really shook up the lineup and made for a fun race, as drivers were fighting to be up front at any point, not knowing when the rain (or fog in this case) would roll in and end the race immediately.
My top pick for the weekend started as Matt Kenseth, but after practices and qualifying morphed into fellow Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. He looked strong early on, but after falling back to third due to pit strategy, he cut a tire and hit the wall. He only lost one lap -- until he cut another tire and hit the wall.
Joey Logano, not on my pick list, then looked like the class of the field, but he wrecked racing for position with Chase Elliott.
Let's move on to this week's race at Watkins Glen. It's a road course located in my homeland of Upstate New York. It's the second of two such races this season, and even though the courses reward different techniques (Watkins Glen favors more aggressive driving, Sonoma is more about smoothness), you can usually tie in performance at each because of how different these tracks are compared to traditional oval speedway racing.
Drivers tend to lead laps in chunks at Watkins Glen, but because the smaller number of laps run at the road courses, laps led and fastest laps are minimized. So concentrate much more on your start-finish differential and finishing position this week.
Keep an especially close eye on track performance. Car strength is not as important here as at a track where speed and horsepower is key. Handling is important, but certain drivers just excel more at the road courses than others.
Here are my picks to get you started this week. But check back after qualifying for my final picks and fades.
I'm starting my team with
Carl Edwards isn't the first name you think of with road course specialists, but he led 24 laps at Sonoma earlier this year, second-best in the field, and had a leading 15 fastest laps, finishing fourth after starting from the pole.
Now we're coming to a track where he's never finished worse than 19th, and that was in his first race at the track. Since then he's had nine-straight top-15 finishes and has been eighth or better in each of the past three. Going back to 2009, only Marcos Ambrose averages more fantasy points per race than Edwards, and Ambrose won't be in the field this weekend.
Keep an eye on these four
Kevin Harvick: Another driver you'd consider having on your roster week-to-week, but don't ignore him on the road course. Harvick has finished seventh or better in the past four road course events, and actually hasn't finished one outside the top 20 since 2009. In the 13 road course events since then, he's only once been held under 30 points.
Tony Stewart: I make this pick hoping Stewart is returning to the form that saw him finish in the top two seven times in an eight-race span at Watkins Glen from 2002 to 2009, with five wins. Since then, he's struggled, not running the race in 2013 or 2014. Last year, he had a mechanical failure and finished 43rd. This season, though, Stewart has four top-five and six top-10 finishes in 13 races. From 2014 to 2015, he had three top-five and 10 top-10 finishes in 69 races.
AJ Allmendinger: The Dinger is a good example of a driver who tends to excel at one road course but not the other. Last year he led 21 laps at Watkins Glen but finished 24th. The year before that, he won here. He's finished 37th in the past two Sonoma races. For his career, he averages 38.0 fantasy points per race at Watkins Glen, and 18.3 at Sonoma.
Casey Mears: Make sure you're on a cheap option like Mears if he qualifies deep in the field. In the past eight Watkins Glen races, Mears has finished in the top-20 eight times, but in seven of those, he moved up from his starting position. He's averaging a gain of 7.6 spots from his starting position in those races, giving him 35.5 points per race.
That's all I have for you this week. Since we're traveling to my neck of the woods, make sure you get yourself some spiedies this weekend. Look it up, and thank me later.
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